


Savages

by Sing



Series: Out of the Deep [1]
Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Adventure, Disney's Little Mermaid/Pocahontas cross over that no one asked for., F/M, Fantasy, Romance, fairytale retelling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-04-29 02:56:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14463483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sing/pseuds/Sing
Summary: There are many mysteries under the sea.A Siren who once broke all of the rules.A merman who's chosen a new nation for love.A boy who lost his father.The man who fell overboard.The Princess who's life will be forever changed.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Sleepy Hollow, The Little Mermaid nor Pocahontas. 
> 
>  
> 
> Short chaps.
> 
> Comments are love!

 

 

 

_A storm brews out on the water. Sea foam crested waves that rock and roil. Tossing, to and fro, to and fro, like a toy boat, a ship rocks. It's a lone man. Erstwhile, too curious for his own good, sailing, because he has an adventurers heart. A mind for discovery. He's a book binder, by trade, but he also loves to learn and research by any means possible. Sketching routes of the places he's sailed and what he's found there. He'd be an explorer if anyone gave him the proper chance to be. For now, he's a popular scholar. He is the town darling, the most wanted and coveted, and well loved man of town. The townspeople would follow him, almost anywhere. His family is a long line of scholars and soldiers themselves, each with a remarkable discovery or victory to their name._

_Ichabod Crane, has yet to acquire something he will be known in history for._

_Until today._

_When the ship pitches._

_And him, leaning excitedly over the bow, sketching wildly the clouds that race in the sky, the swirling racing patterns of the fish below, his friend in the village, Joseph Corbin, physician and a scientist of sorts himself, will be eager to see these, to add to his own eccentric findings. If there is one thing these two men bare in common, it is their desire to solve the earth's mysteries, no matter what their day to day profession demands._

_But when the wave slams vengefully againsthis vessel, he keeps skidding until he tumbles over, down, into the tumultuous dark deep blue depths, below. He struggles for breath, limbs flailing, gasping, grasping, as wave after wave crashes over his head until he is over taken._

_He fades from view._

_The water churns still, ravenous._


	2. Chapter 2

An ear splitting high song. 

An alarm.

Abbie rears up from where she was admiring the trek of a crab scuttling along the ocean floor and darts towards the sound, following the other myriad swishing, shimmering rainbow tales darting that way, towards the great reef that signifies the entry to the Kingdom. Her Kingdom.

The song continues, a mournful cry and cutting through it is an authoritative sharp commanding voice. Clear and precise. Her heart twinges as she recognizes it.

That voice once whispered to her while swimming amongst corals. Sweet things, happy things. It whispers sweet happy things still, but not of what they once spoke about before.

"What is it?" Abbie demands as she jostles among the crowd. They part ways upon sight of her, clasping their arms and twirling tails out of her way. "What is it?" she hisses, annoyed.

"Fisherman" someone trills hysterically.

"Pipe down---no one fishes here---"

"An intruder."

"Has it begun again, so soon?"

"Two legged monster,"

"Will more come?"

" _Fisherman!_ " the wail continues.

"Two legger!"

"Human!"

" ** _Savage!_** " a disgusted hiss, a tail swishing angrily along the ground, kicking up sand in an angry spray, a cloud that puffs into Abbie's face. She coughs and waves the debris out of her eyes before clenching her fists and feels her gills open as her jaw unhinges to shriek.

"What is going on!" Abbie erupts. The assembly falls silent. The merman who'd kicked the sand reels away as if stung, face pale as he dodges out of her way, murmuring a keening apologetic song.

"My apologies Princess, my apologies,"

" _Be gone._ " She grits out, mouth clenching back together too tight, her defensive fangs receding, gills and fin disappearing back under her skin. She levels her gaze with the onlookers, torn between the spectacle of their monarchs daughter among them and the cause of the commotion. "Speak!" she demands.

But they do not answer, only turn their heads to the courtyard where the guard hover around a dais.

Sea weed tangles around feet and anchors into the sea bed, his hands wrested behind him by a guard. Shocks of brown and gold hair float about his head. His eyes are closed. His skin is pale. His lips, a tinge of blue.

"A man, your Majesty,"

There's that voice again, her eyes scan until they latch onto him. Broad muscled chest covered in a plate of armor---the spoils of ships ravaged from years past--- and the black blue shoulder length hair that swirls about him. About his arms are bands of gold, newly fitted, glimmering with her seal. The Crowns seal. In his right hand, a multi pronged spear, made of shells and glass that spiral into sharp deadly points. He is so handsome. She wishes her heart didn't flutter.

Captain Andriene.

Andy.

"A man," a warm voice says curiously and it is her father that appears, her mother the queen in tow. "Man has no business, here," the curiosity begins to fade, replaced by suspicion. "Where did you find him."

"A float, your Majesty. In the storm." Andy, _Captain_ , she corrects herself, answers King Ezra dutifully.

"No others," Queen Lori inquires, she swims ahead of Ezra, twirling around the captive, examining him and without breaking concentration summons her daughter. "Abbie,"

Abbie goes forward, cautiously, wary. She has heard tales. Men come to plunder. To steal. To eat. They are barbarians, savages.

That are so peaceful and harmless in slumber. If he is not already dead.

"Measure him," Lori instructs. Abbie's gaze flickers to her mother's warily, but receives only a solemn nod in return. Inhaling deeply Abbie swims yet closer and closes her eyes, and softly, softly, for their ears alone, sings.

There are many gifts among the merfolk. Sirens with songs sung to kill. Melodies for atonement and love. Tunes for divining. The future, the past, the present. The truth. They are all taught the same repertoire, but some have more of an affinity for certain songs than others. But royal blood must master all…..and Divining is the one in which Abbie has struggled.

Weakly, at first, wavering she starts before a thought occurs to her. Her eyes snap open and flicker to his blue lips. "Is he not already---"

"Breath was given."

Shivers ripple through her scales. She glances over her shoulder at Andy, who has swum closer to observe. It has been a while since he has been this near, and the weight of his gaze is so warm and familiar Abbie fears she won't be able to concentrate.

"Breath was given," Andy reiterates. "But won't be given again,"

A subtle reminder that if she doesn't hurry, he will perish here among her people. But if she measures him and finds him false, it will be death for him anyway. They will strip his skin and claw at him and send him floating back to the surface to be found, a warning that men are not welcome on the sea.

Stealing herself Abbie rolls her shoulders and starts again, more confidently. She keeps her eyes open this time and turns her warm tuneful voice on the stranger.

If she's not mistaken, his head lolls in her direction, as if captured by her song. The whole of him seems to sway towards her and it takes everything within Abbie not to dart away. This is the pull of the magic. It will bear him to her and she will know his intent.

She sings, and sees the scene unfold. The maps he sketched. The boat that rocked.

But why does he sketch the paths of fish and the sky. She wonders, scanning the image quickly, thinking. Trying to find wickedness in it but searching and prodding deeper with her song finds only insatiable curiosity. A meddlesome mind. A hunger for the unknown.

Only a wanting.

Like my own, she thinks, shaken by the realization her voice breaks, song, shattered, and his form lulls back away from her. She takes a minute to gather her thoughts. What she has felt and seen. Denying, over and over again, that she could have any feelings in common with this stranger. He is dangerous here, dangerous to her. He poses a threat to her calm order.

"He is safe." she announces, voice strained. Lori levels her gaze at her and Abbie repeats herself. "He poses no threat. He is not a fisherman. Nor solider. He is from above. A…..binder of texts. He enjoys nature that is all."

"Those who fed on us and our kin claimed a love of nature," someone from the crowd snarls and with a sharp jerk of his spear baring arm Andy dispatches one of the guards to remove the dissenter from their presence. But none the less, the words take root and a murmurs begin.

The royal family let the rabble build for but a moment beforeEzra gives a subtle nod. Andy's voice cuts clear through the ocean.

"Silence before their Majesties. They who have protected you for leagues upon leagues. Her highness has spoken." he swallows, glancing back to Ezra, who looks to Lori. Lori is a Queen in her baring, benevolent, warm, but sharp when need be. Abbie knows by the way her skin tingles that her mother is reading her, not with song, but instinct.

"And he shall be released to the above." She says at last, tone measured and not to be disputed.

Andy himself seems wont to rally against the decision but the king acquiesces and there is no way, newly minted Captain of their guard, is he going to challenge the Queen so openly. Especially not after removing the earlier disturber. He bows sharply and turns to his men. "Above," he instructs.

"May I go," is out of Abbie's mouth before she can even understand what she's asking.

Another look from Lori, another nod. "Go and see our way, and come straight back."

Dizzy, Abbie takes off after the entourage that has already detangled the man and begins to bear him back out of the kingdom when her fathers voice rings out. "Andriene."

Andy pauses, turning sharply just as Abbie reaches his side.

The water hums and crackles with the look they exchange before the king speaks. "Care for her," he says.

Both a reminder, and heavily weighted warning.


	3. Chapter 3

The journey is silent and swift, and before long they are breaking surface heaving the mans form upon the shore.

It's so crisp and clear up here, there's a slight assault from the air on her lungs but still,it's so, bright. The sun is hot and beaming and Abbie can scarcely believe that great orb of heat beats down on the people of land every day, feeling it on their skin, making them perspire. When she has only ever had need to know the cool wet depths of the kingdom she calls home. The soldiers retreat but Andy lingers near where she watches, wanting to be sure the stranger wakes up.

"Who gave him Breath?" She asks faintly, knowing the answer somehow makes things better but more complicated. Because in this moment Abbie already knows there has been a shift inside of her and it will be hard to turn back.

"I did." Andy affirms. Like she knew he would. Like the caring benevolent man she chose for during the Great League. That was back before he joined their army. Before he endeavoured to join their nation for good, leaving behind his own. He left for her. She'd known it then. But the post he took…..she'd have never wanted that. Not knowing what it stands for. Armies protect…..yes. But they also keep out.

Still. "Thank you," she says, not meeting his gaze, instead, leaning closer to watch the slow rise of the mans chest. Curious, she edges closer, half dragged up out of the water. It's difficult to breathe with so much of her exposed.

"Princess," Andy warns, aware of his men's eyes watching. "Princess,"

She ignores him. Eyes flutter.

" _Abbie_ ," Andy grits.

"I just want to be sure---" the eyes open. They blink and squint at the sun, disoriented, head turning until they latch onto her. Eyes so blue and clear and pristine. Like the water.

The Ocean, her home.

She is at home in his eyes----can it be the sun has grown so intensely hot? She ponders this as the breath steals from her lungs. She thinks she might perish here, beheld by that blue gaze, the eyes that widen as the adjust to what they see, the pink returning to his lips that he licks as he struggles to form words in his awe.

He is beautiful. It hurts her to think it.

She has no business to find anything about this world above beautiful. It cannot be hers. She has long wanted to see it, explore it, there is a song if she ever dared to sing it, but what she is……surely, she could never…..and yet. She feels her throat unlocking with absurd daring and hope. She would sing it for him, for this place. If only she could remember to breathe.

" ** _Abbie_** " Andy snaps, voice edged with alarm as the man raises himself up, and begins to crawl forward, bedazzled by her.

"Do I dream?" he asks faintly. "Did I dream it? did you sing to me? Who are you….." and then his eyes trail off, along her form. His face blushing a furious red. She wears a bodice of seaweed but she supposes it is less modest than what women wear upon land. But she sees it, the moment when he notices her torso tapering down into the shimmering rose hued and golden scales. Like the inappropriate warmth in her heart.Her scales that flush, betraying her. "You're…." he gapes.

She cannot speak. The man draws nearer.

"Your name," he pleas. "Tell me your name?"

She can't.

" _ **Princess!**_ "

She darts a look over her shoulder to reprimand Andy, but he bobs back under the water in cover, only his dark eyes watch, narrowed and glinting. And then she feels it, the touch on her hand. What have I done, she thinks, her tail blanches startling white as she looks back to the man who has taken her hand in his, pulling it slightly closer to him, marvelling at it, he meets her eyes. "Pray tell me," He's utterly entranced and tugs her hand closer over his heart, clasping it to him and then there is a great terrible shriek.

The mans eyes go round in horror.

Her fins and gills open and she feels the water roil with the soldiers that surge up out of the water, angry, fangs bared, spears held high, and the horrible war cry that breaks from their mouths. "No!" she calls as they dart forward, throwing their spears and the man scrambles and staggers in fright, running, streaking away. "No! He meant no harm!"

A hand seizes her arm and drags her back under, darting forward ferociously. As her heart rate slows she watches the protective sharp fins recede on his arms and back and she sees red. Andy. 

* * *

 

"How dare you!" She shouts.

He doesn't look back, just keeps tugging her forward. The soldiers are well behind them, he all but abandoned them in his haste to get her away from the shore.

"Let go of me, stop it, stop it, what is wrong with you,"

"Princess!" Andy interrupts.

"Don't Princess me!"

"Abbie," he implores.

"You behaved like…..like predatory fish up there, what were you thinking?" Abbie berates as she finally pulls away, flicking her tail to swim ahead.

"Princess he was about to----"

She whirls around angrily. "To what, _Captain Andriene_ , hold my hand?"

Captain Andriene, merkin of the seven seas, a face carved of marble and hair of the inkiest black,Gentle shimmering dark eyes--his face falls and he reaches for her. "Abbie, don't do that to me, I'm still Andy----"

"That wasn't my friend up there," she chastises. "So quick to launch into attack. I don't know who that was, Captain **_Andy_** , but it wasn't you. I can escort myself home from here." With a swish Abbie darts ahead a few yards and keeps swimming forward, not looking back at the small security detail that trails behind her, chastened and fearing perhaps a lecturing from her parents. They're a new crew of guards, recently medalled and decorated. Some of which she has has grown up with. Someone she… for two summer seasonsduring the Great League. A mating season for their people.

It had been, Andriene, Andy, Brooks. He always returned home to his nation then.But at the end of last summer seasonhe volunteered for the army. He'd never breathed a word of it to her. But that was the path he'd chosen. To safeguard and dispatch the curious from their dwelling.

He was meant to keep her people in, safe, from the unknown.

Considering they had spent much of that season with their tails twined while reclining on slabs of rock and coral wreathed around, day dreamingcuriously about above. How she had wondered. Abbie had never voiced an actual desire to go----but Andy had known, it interested her. His decision to join the arm had seemed like a slap. And then he rose ranks, and there he is now, her old friend, and more, returned to her.

A guard dog.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Comments comments comments please!

"Was he returned safely?" Queen Lorilifts her head from the tablet she's looking over, hammering into it daintily, just as her daughter bursts into the throne room. 

"He was until Andy decided to bare his fangs at him."

Lori arches a perfect brow. "Surely he didn't----"

"He did! He encouraged all of them to scare the man within an inch of his life before hauling me off like…..thirsty sharks….."

"You have a cousin with a touch of shark, Abbie,"

"You know what I mean." she snaps, folding her arms she sinks down into a seat beside her mother.

Lori reaches to pet Abbie's hair. Lustrous waving and curling strands of darkest brown and black, and these days, as she ages, shocks of gold weave in between.

 Mermaids live incredibly long lives, with an extended childhood, an enduring youth, and even old age creeps on them, slowly, slowly, showing no real effects until their very last years .Mermaids age in gold and silver. Gold for the vibrancy of their youth, silver, the wisdom of age. You can tell their stages by their hair.  Lori's own mane shimmers and sparkles with flashes of silver. Although wisdom came on her earlier than it does most.  She marks the tone of Abbie's voice. "But otherwise, he was unharmed?"

"He spooked, obviously. But he seemed fine when we left. I don't understand why we get this way about land. We are one part of the earth they are another, why do we fear it so much----"

"So very little good, comes from above, Abbie. You must know that. They poach the lessors for amusement or food. They intrude with their expeditions……they invade us because they can, not because they are invited. And so rarely, do they ever seem inclined to engage with us, understand us, on our terms, instead of theirs. It is why not long ago, our people were driven from them. Witch craft. they claimed. For the songs we sang.....for the ways we could...." she trails off.

* * *

No one sings those songs anymore, not since she herself the queen out lawed them. She had forbid them be taught when the crown was hers and there was a spectacular row between her and an advisor. The Sea Witch that has since departed from them. 

* * *

 

"But have any of us ever approached them?" she argues. "Not the flounders and sea horse and angel fish, or the mollusks or purpoises, but us, who can speak?"

A laboured sigh before the Queen looks at her kindly. She understands her daughters want for the above, to have access to the unknown. The allure of men. She has seen it and spent a good deal of her life before becoming Queen, a Siren. She knows the enchantment of men on two legs. She knows how they can gaze at you with that fascinated adoration----before being lured to their deaths.

* * *

 

On land, they were enrapturing musicians. Charming all who would listen. But jealousy of less interesting women had convinced the public that their song was evil and wretched. Their lies had turned the heads of the men who loved them, to violence.

And so they had learned to turn their gift of song, into protection. 

Sirens were once the top rank of their defensive army.They drew in the explorers, those poachers who pursued them, those intruders, the fishermen who would rob them of resources and capture their smaller kin wanting to starve them and halt their nations growth---and sank them for their curiosity. Watched them wreck upon rocks and unnoticed troubled waters.

Watched them panic, wrangled from boats by her fellow soldiers, and feasted on.

Dark, rapturous, wicked times, in the sea.

And a few, if they were sweet and proclaimed love---as they did in the final moments of a Siren's song, when the melody has thoroughly bewitched them---they would lovingly take the sailor down from the boat, and with their lips softly on theirs, draw the breath gently out of them.

And the man would stroke their hair, revelling in what he was deluded enough to be the sweetest of kisses, before his lungs were empty. Then their eyes would register a very mild, distant shock, before the Siren released them, and their bodies floated to the depths.

Those were dark days.

* * *

 

Lori remembers them vividly. But she did it, as a soldier, protecting her home. Though she refrained from the insidious torture of kissing them to death----it felt a false horrible betrayal of ethics even then, save for one man. Before she would marry Prince Ezra.

He'd been light hair, almost silvery, prematurely aged, for so young. With the sweetest bluest of eyes. She'd been on duty one night, on her designated rock, when he'd floated by. He'd startled at her presence there, before she could open her mouth to sing---it was a hesitation that would earn her, her first great heartbreak.

He'd been a fisherman, nothing more. A man raising a young boy alone back on the shore. He'd begged her pardon.

"I chose the man of the land. I swam complicity by, while he poached from us," Lori recalls. Abbie has heard this story, more than once.

"I let him hunt. To feed his son. He would visit me, with gifts from above," Her eyes go misty and she fiddles with the string of pearls and shells about her neck. There is one shell, a shining polished gold one shaped like a conch that her fingers take hold of. Abbie know it's from him, that sailor Lori long since has stopped naming, only she would say he had been named for Summer. And Lori grows a little melancholy still during the season.The shell Lori strokes, is in fact a gift from the man's son. A little boy who had found it combing the beach and had given it to his father.

"He told me, he told me the boy wanted to thank me…….b-because of me --- through my betrayal of my own people---he was able to eat."releasing it, Lori meets her gaze."It reminds me, convinces me, that sometimes, it might be worth it to choose another path." she releases the necklace and floats up and gives herself a shimmy, shaking the past and old thoughts from her head. "But you know how my story ended, with a man from above."

Her tone changes, the water roils. A patch of the water grows dark and Lori sings, a remembering song, and the image unfurls there for Abbie to watch, as she has before, but every time it seems to grow more vivid with age. Acclimating to how much heartbreak Abbie can bear to witness with her own eyes. The mans face, clear eyes. The pallor of his skin, sinking, down, down, into green black dark.

But nonetheless,Here is the teachable moment. The thinly veiled scolding masked in the Queen's pain. A lesson she learned and therefore Abbie ought to take heed of.

"But my place was here, in the end. And because I understood that, for many years since, we have known, peace, in our waters. For that reason is why we were not quick to dispatch of our….visitor today."

"But because of what you did, you were able to evoke change." Lively, headstrong--she gets that from me---Lori sighs, beleaguered, her daughter counters. "You, were able to change everyone's mind, about warring with above. About----"

"I convinced them, that if we could agree not to trouble each other, no one must heedlessly lose their life, nor break their hearts." She is every bit the Queen now as she speaks to Abbie. Sage wisdom and voice firm. "I convinced them that if we maintain boundaries"  No more going up there, they would no longer come here. They would think us all dead.  "harmony could prevail. And we have had a grand deal of that since."

"Do they not still hunt? come to----"

"Not in our, waters." The Queen bristles. After all, the rumours have served well to keep the humans at bay for years. 

"It's been, decades, centuries, Just as we have changed, surely they have too---"

"Is that an argument you'd like to make to your father?" she asks curiously. Abbie's face colours and her scales tingle hot. "He'll think you are hoping to match above water instead of down here---"

"I would never be so foolish as to----"

A sad reproachful look, "I wish I could believe you, Abbie. But you are my daughter. So I know better than that. Provisions have been made." she quips, turning her back and taking up the slab she was working on.

"Provisions?" Abbie echoes, swimming up closer. "What,"

She whirls back around and shows it to her. "It's a speech, Your father and I haven't decided who will deliver it yet. But as it pertains, to you, you might want to read it first before declarations are made."

Cautiously, Abbie reaches forward for the slab, hefting it in her hands, squinting to read the characters. It takesthe third read to settle on a clear emotion.

When Abbie looks up, Lori is regarding her carefully, gauging her reaction. "Abbie," she starts, reaching to touch her shoulder.

"No," Abbie starts. "No you can't do this, you----"

"It is your father's idea. Besides, since he came to court he has been an asset to us, you can vouch for that Abbie, you spent a season with him---"

"Before he joined the army. Before he started policing and being a barrier to me and stopped being my friend, mother you can't ask me to----"

"It's an alliance, your father wants. And this is closer to a love match than many could hope for. He is no strange merman Abbie."

The doors swing open and in comes her father, King Ezra, bobbing happily with Captain Andrienein tow.

"He asked, Abbie, he's proven a great loyalty to us since arriving here, we could not turn him down. I served with his mother." Lori admonishes.

King Ezra swings his arms open wide, exultant at the sight of his pride and joy, and Andy swims beside. He is handsome. He is still decorated in his official armour and part of Abbie can hear the whispers and chatter of her kinfolk on how handsome he is, even she can remember how once she used to find so much comfort in his warm gaze. Abbie tries to remember that had he asked two summers ago her answer would be different.

"Abbie," Ezra greets warmly. "Lor," he glides up easily to kiss her mother. She watches them, and in spite of what Lori has told her about the land dweller she once felt for, Abbie can see that her parents are in love. A deep trusting love that has only grown over the years. Perhaps it was not immediately so, but it is there now. Strong, and apparent. Looking across to Andy, Abbie tries to imagine that maybe what lies between them, a sort of complicated resentment, might also transform with time.

But then there are the blue eyes of the stranger before her. His gentle, surprisingly large hand dwarfing her own. His unruly dark hair and she remembers him drawing near and thinking, recklessly, senselessly, that this, was right. He was right. That her and this man could be right together----before Andy had unleashed his terrible war cry.

"What are you two up to, oh, I see you were having just the discussion I was about to begin," Ezra says, calling Andy forward. He glides up beside, broad shouldered and strong. Lips that hold a twitch of a secret smirk that she used to love. Abbie can see too easily, how the crown would sit on his brow one day.

The crown he'll get through a union to you, she thinks bitterly. 

"Captain Andriene,"

"Andy," he corrects politely. "If I may, your majesty, Andy, please."

Ezra smiles. "Andy. He wishes for your hand in marriage, Abbie, and I have granted it."

"You what?"

Beside her, Lori is still. She knew. That wasn't just a draft she'd been having her look over, not just an idea. Not a subjectto discuss.But an official proclamation. Ezra father looks on, befuddled. Andy's gaze softens, reaching for her hand.

Abbie reels away from him as if scalded and he dips into a low bow.

"Please, Abbie, I wanted to speak to you before, "

"When!" She screams. "Before or after your behaviour above today! How about before I got home and got ambushed by you all making plans for my future and deciding it before I could blink!"

Ezra exchanges looks with Lori."With the stranger? what happened---"

"Sssh, Ezra." she hisses back.

"Abbie---"

"Andy----"

"I am at a time in my life to take a bride. I would like, I want, my mate and partner to be you. Someone I respect and care for, that I can protect----"

"Not respect enough before running to my father. To talk to me first, or else you'd have known, Andriene, that I'm not prepared to marry anyone, and right now, especially not you"


	5. Chapter 5

Abbie kicks up a small whirlpool as she makes her exit,throwing Andy's balance as she leaves, not once looking back as she darts to her quarters. Her best friends are there, chatting happily on the oyster bed----a gigantic thing----when she bursts in. They pause as Abbie throws yourself on the plush cushions.

"Abbie?" one calls. "Abbie are you----"

"I'm engaged." 

The other, wavy dark hair twined in a braid and freckle faced reaches for her shoulder. Sophie. "You do not sound pleased,"

"I'd call that an understatement." This from Cynthia. "You sound furious."

"They betrothed me to Andy without anyone asking first. And he…..he was so unreasonable when we took the stranger back----"

Cynthia's eyes brighten. "Ooh, tell us about that. Did you touch him?"

A pause.

Abbie recalls her hand in his.

"Yes,"she says warmly. "He woke up before we left. He had the bluest eyes, and the softest hand….I sound ridiculous don't I."

Cynthia raises a brow. "You sound the way you did two summers ago, smitten with a man you're now engaged to and none to pleased about it. Colour me skeptical."

Embarrassed, she flushes from her head down to the tip of her tail magenta and scarlet. "He was handsome." she concedes. "And….I can't explain it, I felt a pull towards him. And he felt it too, I swear it, he leaned in and----"

"You didn't kiss him!" Sophie exclaims.

"Of course not!"

Cynthia smirks. "No but she wishes she had. And how did that go?"

"What do you think." she snarls. "Andy sounded an alarm and they attacked him."

"Oh no."

"Imagine! we rescue an innocent man from drowning only to threaten him after for what…..holding my hand?"

"For threatening Andy." Cynthia quips, as if she and Sophie are stupid. "He likely spoke to your father this morning. Then here comes the two legged stork of a thing," she grins. "And suddenly his intended is doe eyed."

"I am not----"

"I'm not sure who you're trying to fool Abbie but it won't be me." Cynthia cuts in. "So. What will you wear?"

"Wear? to what"

Sophie rolls her eyes. "No matter what you say. They'll be holding an engagement party tonight." the two mermaids exchange glances. "To be honest with you Abbie we've….all heard rumour that Andy was going to ask you. We're a little surprised that you didn't."

"I don't listen to gossip"

"Well….you might have had a little warning if you did." Sophie chews her lip. "There'll be a party. Tonight, I'm sure news has already broken. The soldiers are worse than most of us, they drone on while doing patrols. You'll be expected to make an appearance……so come on, let's pick which shells you'd like to wear and garlands for your hair----"

"I'm not dressing up to celebrate an engagement I didn't have a choice in, much less to a man who couldn't ask me himself----"

"Then dress up in the hope you can sneak away." Cynthia hisses. She sashays to the small cave that serves aswardrobe and flings the seaweed and kelp curtains wide, pulling out top piece after piece.

An idea occurs to Abbie, but she doesn't dare hope they mean what she's thinking.

"Maybe the stranger hasn't gone far." Cynthia offers. "If you felt something, the both of you,He might return to the beach tonight. If for no other reason than man cannot resist a beautiful woman. Tail or none." she chuckles. "So in case you can get away from the party tonight…..we want you to look good for him. Just in case."

"Just in case," Sophie winks.

"It's an insane idea."

Cynthia shrugs, Sophie tosses her head. "So is a betrothal you haven't agreed to. I'm just saying. This one." she smiles, holding out to her a highly decorated shell bra. Pale pink shells with red and yellow bits of coral. Abbie has always worn a seaweed bodice, accessorized for special occasions. The shells are meant to be worn by women spoken for. She should have questioned when the load of them got delivered last month.

Now, Abbie wonders how long everyone had been silently waiting to hear she'd be marrying Captain Andy and had neglected to tell her.

Silently, she lets Sophie fasten her into the shells that show off her bosom and reveal the tapered muscular waist. It makes Abbie look womanly in a way that is thrilling but uncomfortable. In spite of her age, she has still always felt young and treasured, a head strong darling.

In this, a silent declaration, a reminder for any who had forgotten that she isa woman and has been for sometime, enough so to wed, she feels the inevitable of her future and foolish that she'd allowed herself to be blind sighted by it.

She glances at the other two. Sophie started wearing shells last spring and Cynthia the summer before.

Abbie remembers fondly their weddings. How happy they'd been, genuinely so. Why can't I be happy, she wonders.

Because you can't forget the man on the beach.

As Cynthia puts her hair up, Abbie finds herself hoping, traitorously, that he might be up there as she said. That he won't have forgotten her so quickly either.

* * *

 

Above, the stranger staggered back into town and is called out to by his oldest and dearest friend in the market. "Ichabod!" he calls. "Ichabod what happened to you, you look like a drowned rat!"

"I nearly did die, my friend. Did you not see the storm?"

"I could have told you today would be a bad one to go sailing, you who don't have to fish for your livelihood, book binders ought to stay indoors and maintain that ghostly pallor you've perfected."

"Joe," Ichabod chides, wringing out his shirt as he draws near. "You know I do more than bind books."

"Oh I know, Crane, you draw pretty pictures too,"

"The same damn ones you're always staring at." he laughs. Joe Corbin joins in.

"I don't mean to belittle you, Ichabod."

"And yet you do, but listen, Master Corbin----"

"It chafes me to hear you call me that, you my elder and all Crane." Joe averts his gaze. "my Father, August Corbin,was Master, not I. I'm just the scrappy boy left behind."

"You know I am always sorry to remind you of your father," Crane frowns. "I do not mean you harm."

"I know, I know. I….." he sighs " guess it's one of those things, I've never fully recovered from. He went out that night and……" Joe trails off. He remembers it very clearly, the night his father died.

* * *

 

When his father brought home the beautiful woman he'd said lived in the sea. The fair kind soul who had let him fish so they could live, and built a flourishing business. She was beautiful. Dark glimmering skin and kind, warm shining brown eyes. Her tresses dark an abundant, save for a few silver glimmering hairs in between. He'd been in awe and struck dumb. But father how does she walk if she lives in the sea. Because she is magic, son, he'd said. He'd looked at her with warm adoring eyes and she'd clung to his arm. Because she is the most wonderful God given magic to this earth, and the Almighty above has blessed us with her presence in our lives. She came to see you.

He remembers how she had sung sweet songs, the sweetest warmest voice he'd ever heard,  and made his father smile. How August had twined his hand in her hair and softly touched her cheek before ushering him off to bed. She'd said goodnight too, kissing his forehead and saying how he smelled of the wind and earth but still so sweet.

He'd gone to sleep, and come morning the woman was gone, and so was his father, no one could find him. Only one of his boots floated up some weeks later, and he'd already been taken in by the Crane's then.

* * *

 

"I'm fine." Joe shakes himself. "You seem wound up about something anyway, what is it."

"I nearly drowned!"

"You sound awfully excited by the prospect, I don't think dad fancied it."

Crane's face falls, "Joe---"

"I'm joking! go on."

Somewhat warily, Crane rallies. "I should be dead, Joseph. I should….I should have found my death today in those waters, but I was spared. Rescued."

"A fair tide?"

"No, Joe, a…..a woman. A woman brought me to shore."

Joe's hands, steadily working this whole while, as he squints at a herb. Joe went as far as he could from fishing when he came of age. Studies the ways one can mix herbs instead, for medicine. "Oxygen deprivation is known to cause hallucinations," he murmurs.

Crane blusters. "It is not a medical matter Joseph but a real one. I saw…..she….she had….a tail."

Joe's hands still.

A woman from the sea. "You better stay away from the water a bit Crane, you're not well."

"Don't do that Joseph, you believe me I know you do---"

"And if its true?" Joe retorts. "If…if she is a mermaid," he hisses with a lowered voice. "Then what? What will….."

"She was corralled back under by…..other, brutes, I intend to rescue her."

Joe's brows lift. "Rescue? Rescue the one who rescued you? Ah!" he crows and burst into laughter. "My friend I have a cot there, go and take a load off. I'll check your vitals in a minute."

"I am not ill----"

Joe fixes him with a serious glare. "Let me be the judge of that, yeah?"

* * *

 

"Well?"

"Fiddle," Joe grumps.

"Pardon?"

"As in fit as, " his friend grouches again. He wipes his brow and goes back to the tincture he was mixing before. "Although I do have a serum here to cure that running mouth of yours. Care for some?"

Ichabod glares and his friend chuckles. "You mock me Joseph,"

"You came in here soaked to the skin rambling about women from the sea….I……"

"I know you believe in them, I know that's why you've chosen to do what you do, you want to explain it. You want explanations for your father. What he saw, was she real. Was she the one who….killed him."

Joe's hands begin to shake. "And yet you seem inclined to think I'd be eager to help you go chasing them"

"You want answers for what happened to your father, she may very well be the key!"

"And this has nothing to do with the fact that you, want to see her again?" Joe challenges. "Nothing about that?"

Crane has the grace to blush. "She was beautiful and I cannot explain it but there was a pull to her….."

"An enchantment." Joe brushes it off. "Like what was cast on my father----"

"I know you do not believe that woman killed your father Joe. I know that is not what you think in your heart of hearts. You reminisced on her too fondly when we were children."

"What other explanation can there be!" Joe shoots back, incensed. "The night she leaves is the night I lose my father and---"

"You want answers." Crane cuts in again. "And if the woman on the shore is indeed what I believe, then you can at last, finally have them. And put to rest the mystery of his death. Besides which I do believe she is being held captive among the rest of them. You should have seen them Joe,"

"Underwater savages," Joe muses tiredly.

"Precisely that. Hissing and fang baring and shrieking with spears. They hauled her away without a care and she clearly did not wish to go. Whatever she may be, she saved my life today, and she doesn't belong among them."

"Your plan then?"

"It's a lark and I have little else to go on. But let us return to the beach again tonight. It was night when the one appeared to your father, was it not?"

He watches his friend bite his lips together tightly in a firm line. A tick in his jaw. " Nightfall you meet me here. If I have to wait for you, you are on your own."

"Joe---"

"Ach, Hey, hello, what can I get for you?"

Crane finds himself being ignored when a woman wanders in with a coughing child in tow. "Been troubling him awful,"

Joe frowns, eagerly slipping away from the conversation of mermaids to focus on work. "Might just need a tonic," he murmurs as he puts the child up on the table.

Crane straightens his still soggy attire and slinks away back home.

* * *

 

"Well, he's handsome," Cynthia concedes as they enter the hall. Abbie swims tentatively behind them.Her hair has been done in a half not style with coral and pearls sitting upon her brow in a crown. They match the shell bra perfectly and she knows that all eyes are on the her, the Princess and heir, as she swims forward. Especially Andy's. Sophie makes a tsking noise.

"Yes, he is, were I not spoken for," she jokes and Cynthia pokes her in the side.

Part of Abbie's heart beats faster looking at him, but she's unsure whether it's because this whole situation has made her nervous, or if she's fuming at him for getting her in this mess. He swims forward eagerly to take her hand.

"Captain,"

"Abbie,"

"Captain," She insists, through gritted teeth, making it clear that they will not be familiar with each other tonight. He bobs his head.

"Princess," He glances around. "Will you….swim?" he gestures to the cleared part of the pavilion where all the other merfolk are gathered to watch. On a dais sits her parents, the King watching expectantly. Abbie places her hand carefully, but slowly in his. He guides her and twirls slowly under all of the watchful eyes. The music strikes. Conch shell horns and trilling voices from a small quartet.It chafes at her to hear the cooing and approving mutters of all those around. "They like us together," he says softly, edging closer. Her heart races. Her scales tingle with familiarity. His voice is a warm contrite whisper " _I_ like us together----"

"You chose barriers instead of freedom."

"For you, Abbie" he whispers fiercely. His heart shines in his eyes and she wishes she didn't see it. "Abbie you must know it was for you, I left my home, I chose this life, to be worthy, to have something, anything to offer. To be a man you could be proud of---"

"That my parents, could be proud of," she corrects, sad and disappointed. " I can't be proud of a barrier, Andy" her voice wavering.  "I don't understand how or when that became you---but that's not the mermaid I am, it's not who I want to be." Their  eyes lock on another turn. "This is a formality and show only for our audience tonight. But mark me, Andriene….you…..you cannot be my future."  dropping his hand and feigning a head ache as she swims away, to the dismay and whispers of the crowd. Cynthia and Sophie dutifully follow after, assuring the King and Queen that they will look after her.

* * *

 

But once outside the halls they each grasp a hand and dart forward, racing away and toward the surface until Abbie pulls ahead and they follow after till they're there, popping her head above water, and she can see the moonlit beach. Sophie pops up on her left, Cynthia her right.

"How long should we wait?" Sophie asks.

"We can't wait," Cynthia replies. "They'll be suspicious if they go looking for us and none can be found. One of us mustgo back." Cynthia turns "Sophie will stay, she has the training to protect you.  I'll go back, cover for you, until you return. No longer than an hour," she scolds and then smiles. "I hope he comes, Abbie."

"And if he does?" Abbie asks, heart beginning to beat fast with anticipation. She hasn't considered what comes next, if he does.

"If he comes, and it is right, I'm sure….something, some way, will be found. Everything happens for a reason." She swims up and throws her arms around in an encouraging embrace. She is like an elder sister to Abbie, Sophie a younger. "An hour, no more," she reminds, and with a wink and wave dashes back.

The pair of mermaids draw nearer to the shore when they hear footsteps and Sophie holds her breath beside her. "I wish Cynthia had stayed a moment longer," Abbie whispers, astonished. "My Seas, Sophie, that's….it's him."

Just then the male figure lifts his head and she can see his beautiful eyes. Suddenly he is running, stumbling in the sand towards her and she eagerly edges closer until he is kneeling before Abbie with his eyes wide and his mouth curving into a smile.

"It's you," he looks her over again, fast, then slow. "My God you arebeautiful."

"You came back," Abbie rasps, voice small. "Why?"

"To look for you," He replies, gaze soft and eyes warm. "You have been on my mind, all through the day. Ever since that scene…..I hope they did not hurt you, are you captive there?"

Shefrowns, puzzled. "Captive? no, they are my guard. Over protective but---" Sophie swats her arm.

"Your guard?"

"Yes--- ** _what_** Sophie," Abbie snaps. Only then does the man register her companion. He blinks.

"Two of you-----how many are there?"

"Enough I'm sure," a new voice cuts in. "Probably one for every love sick fool that ventures these waters,"

 _"I was trying to tell you,_ " Sophie hisses  venomously in her ear. **_"He didn't come alone._** "

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Fisherman and The Siren will run like a small concurrent back story as I update. It won't be every update, but it's possible little short backstories will surface through out. 
> 
> Comments are love and motivation!

Joe's mother had passed in childbirth, and had been raised by his father.

A stubborn, stalwart, fisherman. Claimed he'd known only one life, and would know only that one till he died. Came from a long line of sea men. Captains, sailors, fishermen, all. Had he lived longer, he'd have reared up Joe in the trade. Joe, curious and young and squirmy. Young, but keen eyed, had liked to comb the beach, collecting shells. He can still recall the night his father came home with a great haul. Nets brimming, he'd boasted, all the way home with Joe bouncing on his shoulders as once they'd left the Cranes. The Cranes were as close as the Corbins came to family. Looked after Joe when August had to work. He sang and danced that night in their house. Face rosy and victorious. That was the first ofmany. August would go to the market with his great catch. The enormous fish, the pretty sweet fast ones. The people crowded when August's batch came in. They ate better than they had in an age. Joe got a new little coat, and boots. And books. Suddenly there were books. Not the second hand ones from the Cranes, but brand new, proper ones. Coincidentally, bought from the Crane's shop. But the leaves were crisp and had never been thumbed through before. August got new clothes, too. A heavier, sturdier thing as he went further out on the water, more frequently, almost every night, once the fog began to roll in. His father's sent changed then too. Smelling warmer and sweeter than any man out in salt air should bother. Combing his hair and singing a sea shanty as he kissed Joe's brow good night.

* * *

 

The Fisherman and the Siren

August had thought himself merely lucky, spared, that first night when the creature, the being that they had feared and rumoured to terrorize and devour men, gave him leave to cast his nets.

It had not been long, since the merfolk had been run out of town. They'd been chased vengefully from their homes, set fire to in the night. They who use to fill the village with music in abundance, and who could dance, and heal, were turned on swiftly, so swiftly, when a shopkeepers husband left her for one of theirs. And a daughter, skipped out on the good match her parents had made for her, for a merman too. And someone else had claimed a love of music, a desire to quit schooling altogether to sing, and there were more. The mer had about them a sense of whimsy that distorted the order land dwellers knew and threw their lives into chaos and misery. Hearts were broken, lives abandoned. Quarrels erupted. It seemed no trade or commerce could be done for they were so embattled with one another, jealous and petty while the mer seemed to carry on, untroubled. And when it suited them, would return to sea, leaving behind whomever they had stolen from another, until they wished to return again.

When the villagers turned on them, there were pitchforks. There was fire set to homes. There were mer caught, tied, and burned. Chased into the oceans, the waters, seeking to destroy their lives the way the mer had ruined theirs. And then the people knew they had made a dangerous foe. For the things they once had loved them for, the merfolk wielded upon them. Love songs, dirges for the dead. Embracing arms, fins that punctured through those they embraced. Sweet mouths and docile lilting voices became fanged and thirsty and tore apart those who had turned on them.

The mer were scorned, driven to the water and firmly reminded they were no longer welcome above.

And in turn, with every ship that vanished, every man that did not come back to shore, the humans were reminded the same.

So August had thought it small wonder, to encounter one of the famed Sirens, and live to tell it. Foolish then, the desire that plagued him to return and look on her again. The second night she was less kind to him, and had done him the kindness of hissing and baring her teeth at him, as if to remind him, or herself, he would later wonder, that she was dangerous, that they were now sworn enemies. His people, versus hers.

He'd told her he didn't wish to fish this night, but to see her. Eyes changed from their warm welcoming to brown to defensive glittering black, still she entranced him. He knew his son was waiting on the shore for him, tucked in safe at the manor with the Cranes, he knew he owed it to Joe to go back to him, but the draw of the mermaid threatened his senses.

That night she glared at him and demanded more answers. Were there more of them? Would they come to haul all of their resources? She and her Siren sisters would devour them all if so. Sing them to their graves.

No, just me And my little boy. Like I told you.

She'd flung herself off her rock so suddenly August had felt a surge of fear, but then she was at  his boat, delicate dark fingers curling over the side, her ebony tresses, pure as the darkest night, just the day before, today he saw a sliver of silver twined in her strands. He'd been frozen, regretting everything, but then she was singing to him. Her eyes boring into his soul. He'd felt himself leaning closer, perilously closer towards her, and he knew in his mind he should fight it, struggle to stay on his boat and not go overboard, but he was leaning in inches away from her face until she'd stopped singing and touched his cheek. Her eyes still scrutinized him.

You tell the truth, she'd said.

He'd swallowed.

What is your name? he asked. Please, tell me.

You may fish. She'd said, turning her back swiftly on him went back to her rock and watched him fish. Watched him until he had enough and went home.

They continued like this fortnight, he would arrive and she would acknowledge him after singing a brief song. He'd thought it was her way of greeting him. He couldn't know she was divining him a fresh every time. Ensuring that  his heart hadn't turned to malice in the course of the day. That he hadn't run and told other men to come and ravage the waters.

Each day she sang a song because she did not trust him.

It was the third weekwhen he came with no nets, but a token. A gift from my boy. I told him about you. How you've turned our lives for the better. I dare hope against all odds one day, you'll meet him.

She'd held herself still, an uncharted part of her heart suddenly hammering and warming over.

May I give it to you, he'd asked.

Once more, she pitched herself from her rock, and went swimming to his boat, popping up before him. Their gazes had held. He would forever remember her eyes. How they sparkled. Later on, when the pair of them are full of foolish hope, she'll have met his son, and Joe would say, eyes round with wonder, how beautiful and sparkly her eyes were.

On this night, would be the first that she did not sing. The trust had been won. She knew the intentions of his heart.He fastened the pretty shell about her throat on the fine little chain. "Lorelei," she whispered at last, and his answering smile had given her a terrifying unfathomable courage. "But you may call me Lori."

"August," his eyes twinkled.

"Like the summer," she murmured softly.

He'd tentatively reached forward and thumbed her cheek. "Yes" he agreed. "Like the summer."

* * *

 

Joe stands on the shore, shocked. It can't be. It simply cannot be. Not one but two. With wet long flowing hair and bodies half submerged in the water, but he doesn't miss the ends of the great tails swaying idly beneath the surface.

Was this what my father saw? he wonders. That first night, when she enchanted him. Did he look out and see a vision and fall under a spell that would lead to his death. But their faces are so kind, and sweet, even in the glimmers of fear that flit across their features---at sight of him, not Ichabod---he struggles to reconcile the creature, woman, whatever she had been in the end, that murdered his father, with these.

And yet, when he looks into the eyes of the one that Crane is leaning so precariously toward, he cannot help but feel a pang of familiarity in her dark brown gaze and fear like ice seizes his heart.

Eyes like hers. He thinks. Like the woman from the sea who sang him songs. Whom he gifted that shell. Who made his father vanish.

* * *

Abbie blinks in shock as the man lurches forward, seizing her blue eyed stranger and wrenching him backwards, screaming.

Beside her Sophie's eyes turn a glimmering pitch black and she hears the click of her friends jaw unhinging to bare fangs but she grasps her arm tightly, biting back the sting of the sharp fins that begin to raise there. "No, Sophie, calm be calm."

Sophie pauses, heaving, blinking deliberately and lets her defences fall, but there is still a dangerous darkness to her eyes as she regards the new interloper.

"Joe! Joe! I demand you behave yourself and unhand me! **JOSEPH!** "

"It's one of them what killed my father Crane, I know it!"

"You are blathering nonsense!"

"Me? You who court monsters of the deep!"

" _Monsters_ " Sophie growls, dodging closer to the shore, as if she would show Joe just how much of a monster she could be.

While Sirens no longer patrol as they once did before, there is still a division of them among their armed forces, and Sophie has been a most diligent student, she is descended from the most fearsome sea witch that has ever roamed the seas. "I will show him a monster, let him test me," Sophie threatens, beginning to croon.

"Silence!" Abbie yells but in her panic she emits a shrill scream that halts the men scuffling on the beach as they clap their hands to their ears, crashing to their knees.

The air is still.

Quiet, as Crane and Joe chance to lift their heads and look to the two mermaids still bobbing in the water, although now at a considerably greater distance.

"We must go," Sophie says coolly, grasping Abbie's fingers in her own. "They are dangerous."

"Sophie," Abbie pleads, torn. She has not even learned his name.

"No! Please, don't go, wait!" Crane thrashes away from Joe who tries to hold him back and splashes into the water, desperately hurtling himself towards Abbie before Sophie swims in front of her defensively. And this time she makes no efforts to hide her fangs.

Crane halts, swallowing deeply. "Please," he begs. "I mean no harm. I only…..only all day I have thought of you," he stretches to talk over Sophie's shoulder, holding Abbie's gaze. "Please, your name, at least. And I will give mine. I beg you, let me thank my rescuer."

Sophie hisses but feels a gentle hand on her shoulder and she exhales, burying her face in her hands she turns away while she tries to regain control. "Be careful," she grunts, half garbled as her jaw latches back.

"He won't harm me," Abbie says with a bone deep surety that should scare her. Should should should. There are so many shoulds, in Abbie's life as of this morning and yet she doesn't take heed of any of them.

The man walks closer, water coming to his waist, feet kicking in the water. Sophie glances over him once and nods, though she warily eyes Joe on the beach. Abbie gives a small smile as he reaches her, stretching out his hands and she reaches back. Their hands fit and clasp. "My Seas." she whispers.

"My God," he replies.

They behold each other, rapt.

The water ebbs and flows about them steadily, each one watched over by a suspicious comrade.

"Ichabod Crane," he manages at last. She wrinkles her nose.

"Crane,"

Ducking his head Crane smiles. "If it suits you, my lady."

"Grace Abigail……Abbie, call me Abbie."

"Grace, Abigail," he recites reverently, and then his eyes go soft. "But I shall call you, Abbie," his voice is a deep rumble that makes her shiver. The water suddenly seems warm. There's illumination beneath the water and Crane glances down to see a shock of magenta and gold flash below. Abbie feels her face heat. That would be her tail, blushing.

"Was…..Abbie, was that you?" he asks, amused though confused. He can only stare in awe of her, thumbs lightly stroking the back of her hand.

Abbie gazes at him, transfixed, only distracted by an angry slap of water.

Sophie.

Rolling her eyes Abbie clears her throat and begins to pull away. "I must go, I am glad, to see you again, Crane."

His grip tightens. "Must you….I wish that….will I see you again? Can….may I?"

Abbie raises a brow as she continues to disengage from him.

"I am only curious." Crane makes his plea. "I am only….insatiably curious. And…..I……I feel….."

Don't let him say what he feels, she thinks. As if that somehow will stop the inevitable. As if his muted confession makes her own null as well. There is a pull between them that she cannot shake, and can't….it won't bode well. They are of different worlds. Different species.

"Tomorrow," she whispers, breaking away from him she darts back, grabbing Sophie's fingers they dive down out of sight, only the tips of their tails waving briefly above water before they too disappear.

* * *

 

Crane trudges back onto the shore and sits in the sand, silent and contemplating. His heart hammering. Tomorrow. Tomorrow when? he ponders. Day break? noon? the eve?

"Joseph." he calls. "You saw her, didn't you?"

"I did. And her vicious friend."

"She is only protective of her."

"That level of protectiveness would have seen you killed tonight. You're lucky there weren't more of them" Joe curses.

Crane clamps his mouth shut, unwilling to admit that for split second he had felt a bolt of fear. 

"I forbid it. It's dangerous and stupid, and I won't be accompanying you here again. I will tell your uncle, I'm going there now,"

Heaven help me has he been talking this whole time, Crane finally snaps out of his own thoughts at mention of his uncle. " _Joseph,_ Joe, you cannot, you know you _cannot,_ "

"I will! First my father and now you! I always thought it was lore, Crane, I really did, men use to go missing from the village all the time. My father used to speak of it, but my God, had I known! It's them!"

"Whatever do you mean---"

"Don't be an imbecile! You who read so much! Know you nothing of their wailing songs that draw men to their death! It is they! They are the ones! and you are……you are falling in love with one! Such a harbinger of evil!"

"Saw you evil on her face, Joseph?" Crane rails. "Saw you wickedness, where, in the swish of her tail?"

"Would you listen to yourself defend that creature!" Joe spits. "How can you entertain it?"

"She saved my life---"

"Well she-----her kind, stole my fathers!" Joe rages. The accusation rings in the night air, growing chilled. His chest heaves and a curling heat, anger, helplessness, roils in his belly. She had been right there, he could have had vengeance for his father. If it was not she herself he knows the mermaid that has Crane so besotted, he knows without a doubt she is descended from the monster that took his father after playing nice with him one evening so long ago now. The last time he would have seen his father. He had trusted, that, thing. Fancied her a goddess come from the sea.

August Corbin had been the last of the village to go missing. The disappearances had stopped abruptly after then. For years, silence and peace. But now they have returned, to claim how many more?

"Joe," Crane calls softly, regretful. "I'd forgotten, Joe, but….you cannot be sure."

"She has the same _eyes,_ Crane." Joe screws his mouth tight. "How can you tell me I am not sure, _when she has the same **eyes**?_ "

* * *

 

"That was mad." Sophie reprimands. "He is mad and you are madder."

"Sophie,"

"I'm telling your father,"

" _Sophie_!"

Her friend whirls around, her hair writhing about her face and eyes wide. "What else would you have me do? It seemed harmless, sure, Abbie I admit it, I humoured you and it seemed exciting but, he didn't come alone, Abbie. Suppose I hadn't gone with you?"

"He wasn't going to harm me, Sophie,"

"No, but his friend would have! He'd have killed you given the chance, didn't you see the way he behaved?"

Abbie folds her arms stubbornly and pauses as Sophie swims ahead. "Before, or after, you went all Siren on him."

"It's my fault now he was hostile?"

"Ugh," Flinging her arms up in the air Abbie flicks her tail and moves forward. "They are only people. Two legged…..yes, but people,"

"You say that as if you forget our history with land dwellers. What they did to us for being different. As if you forget what I've been trained for should there ever be war."

"If you wouldn't be so quick to raise fins,"

"I see it now. It was Andy's and now my fault, that we make the humans agitated?"

"I'm not saying that,"

"Then what are you saying!" Sophie demands, grasping Abbie's shoulders. "I admit I was curious and went with you. A lark, sure. See the human you'd gone starry eyed over----"

"I have not gone---"

" _Tomorrow_ ," Sophie says in such perfect mimicry Abbie gets chills. It's a very unique gift to Sophie. Imitation is not an art mer deal in. But Sophie's heritage lends her an eerie affinity for it. There have always been rumours of the gifts the sea witch possessed. This ease of replicating voices, was one. It makes her scales shiver. 

"I heard you up there," she goes on. "Making promises to see him again, how? How do you intend to do this? to what end?"

"I go where I please."

Sophie barks a laugh. "Do you think that remains the case after tonight?" she snaps. "Let me remind you tonight was your engagement party which you fled for….curiosity sake, but it stands, Abbie. You're a princess, our, _My_ , Princess." she emphasizes.

Abbie's brows knit. "I thought you _were,_ my friend."

"Friends, remind friends, that you are publicly engaged to Captain Andriene, like it or not. And friends remember to keep their friends, safe. I...I  am loyal to the crown and I still serve you.  I'm…..I can't help you go back there, Abbie. I know you're thinking it. It cannot end well. Not for any of us."

"You're supposed to support me."

"And you are supposed to rule. One day. Take care to remember it."

* * *

 

"What took you!" Cynthia hisses as her friends finally return, opening the door covertly for them to duck inside. "Andy, and your parents have been by, and I had to stop short of telling them you had Rot before they'd be convinced you wanted to be left alone."

Abbie clasps the woman's gratefully. "I am sorry you lied for me, Cynthia. Truly. There…..was a bit of hold up."

"Sssssh." Cynthia urges them inside and then secures the door. "Hold up?" she queries.

"He brought a friend." Sophie seethes.

Raised brows. "Oh?" while Cynthia's face and posture is measured and cool, Abbie can see the tell tail flicker of white surging across Cynthia's scales. Fright.

"Just men," Abbie assures. "Just men, Cynthia, no warriors, no…..just, humans."

Cynthia relaxes some, flopping dramatically on the oyster bed beside Abbie. "Well was it worth it." she grumbles, though theres a slightly impish twinkle in her eye. "Our grand ruse? was he at least as dreamy as she says Sophie?" she wheedles.

"Blue eyes, like the other one." she mutters.

Abbie's lips quirk. "He wasn't dreamy," she corrects, touching her hand softly, remembering his voice as it curved around her name. As she couldn't help but practice his in her own head on the swim back. "He was a gentleman. Theres a kindness to him, he's so handsome."

"She's got it in her head to see him again." Sophie scowls. "Tomorrow. I asked her and who does she expect to help her abscond this time?"

Cynthia blinks between her two friends, sensing tension. "What else happened up there."

Neither Sophie nor Abbie are inclined to elaborate, instead Sophie tidies her braid in Abbie's mirror and grasps the door handle. "I'm going home. I'll see you tomorrow."

"You argued," Cynthia concludes.

"She thinks it's dangerous."

"You must know Abbie that it is. Theres a reason why we have spent so many years apart. Our kind, does not go with theirs."

"It did, once. Here we are, I love the ocean Cynthia how can I not it's my home, but do you mean you've never once wondered what it would be like to feel sun on your skin and sand," Abbie flicks her tail once, the tips glimmering. "Sand between toes. To walk streets, and….Cynthia there is such a vast world beyond our bodies of water. There is always a time for change….."

"Andyou would invoke it?" Cynthia challenges, though not unkindly. "We've long since lost the spell that could give us legs. It's been wiped from us. For our safety."

"Safety or fear?"

"In times of war, did they not mean the same thing?"

* * *

 

The door creaks open just slightly after Cynthia departs. Cynthia ducks her head back in, mouth twisting, eyes darting. "If you mean to go, I will back you,"

"Oh Cynthia," Abbie smiles, swimming into her friends arms and holding her tight. "You're too good to me."

"I must admit this isn't a wholly selfless act. Bram's caught the Fever and has been chasing me around the reef."

Abbie smirks. "Too much loving?"

"You should hear him! how he longs to hear the ' _swish swish' of tiny tails_. He's picked **_names_** , Abbie."

Chuckling the two mermaids say goodnight and Abbie swims over to her bed. She's glad to have Cynthia's support, and she understands Sophie's worries, yet her heart dares her to take risks.

But yet, she cannot help but mull over their words.


	7. Chapter 7

It was a tedious day.

A usual day, but tedious none the less. She had her lessons, practicing her singing spells with her mother, and some preliminary instruction on policies, day be day they groom her slowly to take her crown. Truth be told she has been learning since her small years, but the material grows more dense as the years pass. And her mother, a more rigorous task master, although always encouraging and kind.

It was the sort of day she could tolerate well as any other if she hadn't been roped into an audience with Andy that afternoon.

"He inquired after you without cease," Lori had said apologetically as she broke the news. "You are lucky, he was here at daybreak to see you, had it been up to your father, he'd have seen you with sand still in your eyes,"

"Mother," Abbie grouses.

"You cannot hide from him forever, Abbie. You did like him well enough if my memory serves me correctly, two seasons with the man, many of our kind wed after the first one"

"I am not all of the other mermaids," she replies tersely.

Lori purses her lips. Abbie reminds her so much of herself it both warms her heart and terrifies her. She was stubborn and rebellious too, she prays Abbie hasn't inherited it.

"Trust me I am firmly reminded of it everyday."

* * *

 

"Abbie," Andy bows when she enters the dining room.

"Andriene," she bobs her head and takes her seat, nodding politely at the staff who exit shortly after. 

Andy grumps, running a hand through his hair. "If you're going to insist, _Grace Abigail_ " he hisses and Abbie's eyes flash at him angrily.

"Don't you _dare,_ "

"You are enamoured with drawing up more and more boundaries between us if you can, why not go to the utmost of formalities?"

" _I,_ am enamoured? You, _You_ who chose the guard---"

"To serve and protect---"

"To _barricade_ and _trap-_ \--" she counters.

"The crown,"

"Our people"

"You,"

"Yourself, myself, all of us, stuck and battered down here in the past, forbidden from dreaming, exploring, wanting,"

"Is it so awful here?" He demands. Setting down his fork. "Is it so dreadful? that the idea that of staying here, Your kingdom, your inheritance, turns your dearest friend to foe?"

"Do not _lecture_ me," she bares her fangs at him.

"Your love." he presses, leaning in, his voice dropped low. "You whispered once you loved me, Princess," his eyes narrow. "Or was it a folly only, a false declaration, for her highness's amusement"

"I could never be so low,"

"For you know, I have staked and hung my future on that one utterance. On the one hope that this change, this aggressive move would make me worthy of you in your fathers eye."

"Did I ask you for it, Andy? DidI ask you for any of it?" she spits, feeling her eyes burn. "Did I tell you leave your home for mine? To choose me before asking if I still chose you? To plan for me, for us? without being sure I shared the same mind? **_Answer me you wretched mer!_** "

"Did I, ask, for you to select me out of all the others? To whisper whatever addled besotted words that struck your fancy during the League, but apparently hold no real weight the rest of the year? Are you so false hearted? truly? Is this the woman I thought I loved? Dreamed that I could grow to love deeper and deeper each day for all of our infinite years? Tell me I have not upturned my life, for, if not a woman who cannot love me, than one who so readily takes back her heart and words---"

Unexpected shame, hurt and fury kindle beneath her skin. Her scales heating unbearable and glowing red orange as flames. She slams her hands on the table, "If this is all you've come for today, to berate me for not returning your affections---"

Andy lets out an irritable growl. " ** _It is not!_**  You _know_ it is not I----Abbie, forgive me my tone, but……I wish I could understand why, why do you turn me away? reject me? Last we spoke, it was never unpleasant terms."

"Were I to marry you, Andy. Were I to become Queen, and you rise in stature and power, would you let me free our seas? Would you lead them with me, back to the surface, those who wish to go, to claim the lives they had before being chased away? To explore and want for more out of the world than the safe haven of our kingdoms?"

 _"Do you understand what it is you **ask**_?" he hisses.

"I know it would mean going against the wishes of my parents……who you have to thank for your rise----"

" _War!_ " he rasps. "Do you think the men and women who drove our kind back under, burned us alive! Do you think they would welcome us back ashore with open arms? Do you think that if they find us here, that they would not begin the fighting all over again? They called us unholy. Abominations. Affronts to creation---Abbie were they to find us, they would see us all dead, and to take our people back to them---"

"My People, Captain,"

" _Our_ People, because like it or not, Princess Grace Abigail, I am now part of this kingdom. It is my home. And whether or not you accept my heart, my heart is with you, with these people.And to lead them back up there is reckless and cruel. Thoughtless. I cannot imagine how your insatiable curiosity could value more than the lives of our kind."

"Then why save him" Abbie counters sharply. "Why didn't you eat Crane alive when you found him!"

"Because contrary to your beliefs I am not a blood thirsty war monger! I want to keep them out, and yes that means keeping us in, but it means, safety, longevity for us and----" He pauses, dark eyes gone vacant. "What, what did you call him?"

"So we are to be happy being one thing forever, when we have a right to both worlds----"

"Abbie," he swims abruptly around the table to her side and stops shy of grabbing her wrist. "Know that I brought the man becausethere is kindness in my heart, in spite of the armour. Know that, I allowed you to draw near to the human when we returned him, I am still hopeful for peace. But Abbie……if you bring ruin to our doorsteps with, this Crane…..know that peace cannot reign. And the coming bloodshed, you will have wrought it."

"Andy---"

Andriene Brooks, has never been rash, never a spur of the moment man of passion. Calm, gentle, sweet, even with all of his evident strength and sometimes stoic face. That's the merman she knows. It's why his military path has so jarred her senses.

But he is passionate now, when he whirls on her, grasps her arms and tugs her in close, and let's his lips whisper across hers before claiming them completely.

Were they not familiar, her heart aches. Were this pain not so complicated and deep. She wishes she didn't kiss him back but she does.

There is care for him still lurking in her heart, she can't dispute it. Why else is she so hurt and torn about these new developments. Why else does she feel it so deeply when he finally pulls away. It pains her to look at him.

His eyes burn with hurt, so dark and powerful, she feels herself being drawn in, reaching to touch his shoulder. She has never meant to hurt Andy. She hates to admit the truth in words. Is she a selfish royal? is she willing to damn them all for the gaze of a man on two legs?

"Andy,"

He darts back when she draws closer though, and she feels unexpectedly stung.

"I must attend to my patrols," he says gruffly,a flush creeping up his neck, turning his back on her, he swims through the dining hall doors and swishes them shut with a thud.

The food goes uneaten. Her stomach roils.

Is the fluttering of her heart really doing her more harm than good?

Cynthia will be in the courtyard soon, she knows it, to accompany her back above.

But how can she go?

How can she continue to entertain it?

* * *

 

The Siren and The Sea Witch

"Is the night air so kind to you?"

Lori startled as she dove back under,surprised by her comrade and sister in arms, the more advanced of them all, their resident sea witch, but to Lori, only was she ever a friend.

It is one of the many increasingly frequent nights in which she has visited with August. They talk and whisper to each other with their hands clasped over the bow of his boat. She turns a blind eye to his nets that sway nearby, harvesting from them.

Were there another way, he'd say remorsefully, tossing half the haul back. I do not know any other life, but, I have been trying to explore trade of other goods, it means further unfamiliar routes and I would not see you as oft, but, I see, I feel how this pains you Lorelei, he'd say, cupping her cheek, his eyes misty. I cannot bare that my work causes you so much pain. There is a ache in his eyes when she visits him now, she can feel it, a wanting, a pull for more. He has begun envisioning new work and a new future and with it grows a hope.

That if he does enough, she will love him enough, to come ashore for him.

To stay.

Maybe forever.

But these are hard thoughts to entertain with the sea witch writhing beside her.

"Are you spying on me, you wicked creature."

Slitted yellow eyes had flashed at her in amusement. " _Spy_? **_who_** , me? I wouldn't dream of it. I am only foraging for my young, you know how they bawl at this hour."

Lori cut a glance her way. "So close to surface? what do you feed them?"

" _Poor unfortunate souls_ ," she grins, grinning wickedly, "only the purest diet for my darlings, Lorelei, you know that,"

"Mhmm," Lori agrees, flicking her tail hurriedly to put distance between them and August's retreating boat. Until the sea witch grasps her hand.

"Look" she hisses. "A vessel, so close to our waters, let's hunt,"

"Your eyes mistake you, as if a boat could be so near while I was on guard." Lori clucks her tongue in disapproval. "You wound me."

"Your patrols grow longer each night," her friend wheedles and Lori's heart hammers. "And your hair, it turns."

"Oh that's rich coming from you," she chides.

Like all mer, the sea witch has been alive for years that cannot be counted, knowledge and wisdom gleaned from the spell songs she sings that have transformed her beyond most mer's imagining, she has made herself fearsome so few ask to be trained by her. She is the only one of her kind among them, a valuable resource and they have liked to believe loyal, if not ambitious in her service to the crown. For all her years, she is beautiful, if terrifying, with the golden snake like eyes that she can summon at will and her dark lustrous hair that shimmers and dances with the silver of wisdom. Of things discovered and known.Some dark, some light, and most certainly some forbidden. 

But Lori's own mane, glimmers with it, too. Her entertaining of August the fisherman and her growing bond, teaches her new things of the world. Skews it. Altars part of what she has always known to be true. His presence is changing her, she has noticed it in her vanity but had hoped it would go unnoticed.

But that's a foolish hope when one keeps company with the sea witch, sharp, keen, and astute.

The witch twirls with flourish. "I have earned my grey and silver proudly. You know how the men love a wise woman." Then she laughs and darts in quickly, whispering in Lori's ear in a teasing purr.  "You will attract Prince Ezra with your wordliness."

Lori's cheeks had flushed. There have been murmurs for weeks now that Ezra would be returning to them from studying in broader seas. Learning diplomacy and the ways of the other kingdoms.

It is custom for the royalty to choose a mate of the military ranks.

And she is top of hers, as a serving Siren.

All the more blasphemous the things she has allowed to slip through the cracks.

Out the corner of her eye, she catches a glimmer of frayed rope from a broken net.

She'll have to go back for that later.

Friend or none, no one can know about her and August.

About the song brewing in her heart.

* * *

 

"How do you know he'll be here?" Cynthia chatters, the evening is cooler tonight and even Abbie feels goose bumps raise on her skin. There is nothing to be done for it, they will acclimate of course, but until then she does feel the chill, rubbing her arms anxiously.

"I-I don't know," she replies, her mind is scattered to be honest. Their escape tonight had been narrow if for no other reason than she was still distracted by her confrontation with Andy. And even now it lingers in her mind, compounding her nerves. "Cynthia, maybe we should go back, Sophie's right, Andy might be right,"

"You, might be right." Cynthia counters calmly, reaching to touch her shoulder. "There can be more than one side, Abbie, I know your mother has taught you that."

Abbie's mouth twists. "She has also taught me that there are consequences for…..for things like this…." her voice trails off, recalling the faraway mournful look that crossed Lori's features whenever she warned about the above. "Cynthia….do you, do you ever wish you and Bram, could go ashore?"

Cynthia goes silent, her tail turning the contemplative colour of yellow, shining with curiosity. " He was there when they were driven back, you know," she says at last. "He was younger, then, and we hadn't met, but…..he lost his first love, that way. No sooner were they being hunted that she broke from him for a mortal man…..he was wounded by it."

"No love lost there, then," Abbie says.

"No, I guess not." They've not been here long but it already feels like eternity, staring at this empty shore, and as time ticks by they feel more exposed and at risk of discovery. " He has said that he wishes I could see it, though."

A flick of tail and Cynthia turns her back on the sands.

"He says he thinks its something I should see, before we….I mean not that he would delay starting a family for anything. But he did…..enjoy the freedom to come and go, when he had it….were it to come to a vote…..he would be in your favour,"she says finally, softly and turning back offers a faint smile. "I don't fear the shores, Abbie, it is the people who dwell on it."

"What am I doing here?" Abbie laments. "What am I thinking being here?"

"That your heart is worth following," Cynthia says, tucking strands of hair behind her ear. "And it is,"

Somewhere in the midst of her ebony tresses, a strand of hair blazes silverly white.

Abbie swallows hard. "I hope so."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will Crane show up tonight? what are the odds he will?
> 
> Any guesses at who's the sea witch? wonder if Lori will remember to remove that netting. 
> 
> poor Bram got jilted for being mer......do we wonder who that was? and will we see her. hmmm.


	8. Chapter 8

"Abbie, it's getting late, we'll be missed." Cynthia coaxes softly. They've been here nearly half an hour. The sky darkens and the moon glimmers on the surface making their scales dance with the light but still Abbie waits.

She's spent all this time to go back empty handed seems foolish now. He was the one who begged to see her again to begin with. He wouldn't stand her up. He must show, he must.

* * *

 

The house turned in about an hour ago, and it had been eating him alive to wait until then before he could leave. Crane still lives on the Crane family Estate, even though his parents have passed, he has his Uncle Henry. Warm, if not alternatively suspicious and a little iron gripped on Crane's life.

He wishes Crane would marry. He wishes Crane would invent, explore,discover,or be a war hero, anything that could be boasted from the family name. He is the youngest and last remaining of them. But for all of his nephews rampant curiosity, there is only a hunger to absorb information and experiences and do nothing pertinent or profitable with it.

He dislikes frivolity.

And never mind Crane's age, Henry would see very little wrong with pelting him a few lashes for sneaking out after fairytale creatures. 

Crane grimaces as he eases the back door, hearing it shift and creak and cursing softly under his breath for the blasted thing to be quiet. "Damn you," he huffs as he finally slips through and turns around.

"I knew it,"

"Blast it!" Crane staggers backward and bangs his head on the wall, legs kicking out he knocks over a pail that makes a proper crash against the side of the house. "Damn, damn, damn," he mutters, panicked as he bundles his cloak and pushes past the figure he's collided with, grasping his collar. "Are you trying to kill me" he gasps, pitching Joe forward when they've made it to the road. "What are you doing slinking out here?"

"Catching you before you get yourself into more trouble. I know you're out to see the fish."

"And it's none of your business if I am, Joseph! now if you'd please go back home…..how,how the hell didyou know when I would leave anyway."

"You snuck out at this hour all the time for mischief when we were younger, don't think I don't remember."

Crane harrumphs and hurries past, checking over his shoulder to make sure the lights in the house stay off. "What is it you want," he snaps.

"To stop you?"

"You can't stop me, so try again."

"Crane, be reasonable. What….what could be the point? Is your life worth it?"

"Joe, for the last, I am sorry for the way your father passed, but I do not fear Abbie. And I am going to see if she waits for me." he pauses and turns, grasping Joe's arms. "If there's no sight of me by sunrise, you may sound all the alarms you wish."

"By then it could be too late," Joe snaps.

Crane heaves a sigh, stepping back and ruffling his hair, he meets and holds Joe's gaze for a beat.

And continues heading for the beach.

* * *

 

"Cynthia,"

A sleepy burble emits below surface where Cynthia has sunk to, her hair floating above water ike a lily pad.

"Cynthia," Abbie flicks her tail.

 _"Mrrmfhh mrrphhh mmmrphhhmr_ "

"Cynthia!" Abbie insists and swings hard.

" ** _RAWRrrrr……rrrrr…….err_**?" Cynthia rubs her eyes and yawns and then blushes at her raised fins and fangs. "Sorry," she grins sheepishly, "Dozed off. This is past my bedtime you know. Bram's usually tucked me in by now," she chuckles. "What did you wake me for anyway, is it time to go…..oh….."

She trails off when she sees the man approaching, slowly at first, and then running, staggering, stumbling in the sand until he flings himself into the water and wades towards them. He advances with such speed Cynthia darts back and instinctively grabs for Abbie to put distance between them but Abbie lets out a laugh and calls happily. "It's alright, Cynthia, it's him! it's him. You, You came." she turns to Crane who has stopped just out of arms reach.

"I was delayed, I hope you haven't been here, long, I think we should agree upon an hour for the next time we meet?"

Behind her Cynthia coos, "Next time?"

Abbie smiles. "Yes, it would be easier----"

 _"Ahem_ …."

"I see you've brought more friends,"

"My more….understanding friend, Cynthia."

"A pleasure, Cynthia. Ichabod Crane. I trust you will stand guard and see I do her no harm?"

Cynthia raises a brow, scandalized. "A chaperone? I beg your pardon, but no,……Ichabod….. _Ichabod_? really? well, and to think they thought us strange……no, I….I must go home to my husband, he will be worried, I am not often out late. I will leave you two, to….talk. But Abbie," she warns, eyes turned dark and serious."Mind the hour. And you," she directs to Crane. "Do not trifle with her. She can tear out your throat and will sing a dirge for the dead with your blood in her mouth."

Crane pales.

Cynthia nods in satisfaction at his reaction and kisses Abbie's cheek, clasping her hand. "Trust your heart, but be careful."

"I will, Cynthia, thank you."

"I say again mortal if she is not home by dawn, I will come for you. I will lure you here with a song so sweet to your own **_slaughter._** You understand?"

Crane swallows hard. "y-y-yes, Miss, Cynthia."

"Alright, have fun, and Abbie you undersold how handsome he is," she teases with a wink before vanishing under the water, tail waving above for a minute in a playful wave.

It takes a moment before Crane dares to reach for Abbie's hands. "I thought you said she's the more understanding one? I believe she threatened to kill me twice in only five minutes."

"They are only protective of me. I am…..I am well loved, back home."

Crane is forced to think back on Joe's hyperactive intrusions. "I fear I suffer the same."

They stay there, hands clasped, smiling at one another, memorizing the others face before Crane finally speaks. "Well, now that, we're here…..what will we do?"

Abbie looks back over her shoulder at the depths below, beckoning blue black, beautiful beneath the night sky, then back at him.

She opens her mouth, and sings, softly, crooning, a divining song, not unlike what she sang when they first met. She is less nervous this time, more confident andjust as the first, he draws closer to her, magnetized by her voice, and she peers into his eyes, his soul, and is comforted that there is no dark secret revealed, nothing that should make her fear him, and what she's about to do. She is heartened about her decision.

When her song ends, the melody tapering off into a sweet cadence,he blinks his eyes slowly at her, now merely a breath away and dangerously close. His blue eyes scan over her face. "Was that my dirge?" he queries. "It would be the sweetest death knell if so. I know now why men die, enchanted at sea."

Unwontedly, Joe's words ring in his ears but he shakes his head to clear it.

"I would never harm you," she whispers, reaching curiously to touch his face. Her heart jumps when he leans into her palm. She can feel her tail flushing with warmth.

"I believe you. I trust you."

Under the moon light, her skin seems to glow, and the drops of water that cling to her skin and hair shine like diamonds. There is gold in her hair, so vibrant and vital and honest. He thinks he would follow her in this moment, anywhere.

Enchantment.

Bewitching.

_My father, Crane._

It echoers in his mind still, but distantly, a far away hum.

"Hold my hand," she says softly, moving slowly further out from the shore, she runs her thumbs lightly along the backs of his hands as she tugs him forward. She begins to lay back, sinking beneath the surface, pulling him gently, slowly with her. "Don't let go,"

And he doesn't.

And he vanishes beneath the water with her.

The beach is silent and still.

* * *

 

The water is cold, and his cloak makes him heavy but he kicks as much as he can to keep up with her. She's so graceful, but he struggles to keep his eyes open as the current rushes by. There is anervous energy beating a furious rhythm through his being, telling him he's on the edge of something, something that cannot be undone and never can be unknown as he follows silently behind and only stops when she does, breaking the water,her voice close in his ear. "We're here," she coaxes. "Open your eyes."

A wrecked ship, half dragged into an open cave. And within it, littered, with curiosities. More things than he can fathom.

He takes in the mossy green of the figurehead on the prow and the gaping wholes and patches, the slanted destroyed floors, but in nooks can cranny's of what remains of the ships frame, rest these trinkets. It's like capsule, like myriad moments in history frozen in time.

"What…..how….."

"Ships lost at sea, tumultuous storms, are not uncommon, though they are rare. When I was young, myself and my playmates, we wanted some place to play, to frolic, to hide away our own little treasures and discoveries" as she reminisces she ducks her head shyly, embarrassed. "I beggedon their behalf, for them to bring it here."

In truth, Abbie, being Ezra and Lori's only daughter, he had let Abbie have her pick of skeletons and the king himself had commanded the guards, and Siren's who's voices were strong enough, to move the ship to the desired location. So her and her friends could play. She cherishes this place.

It was perhaps the first time it ever occurred to Abbie that she had any sort of power, just by virtue of being her parents daughter.

That things could bend to her will, if she wanted it.

"They have long since outgrown here," she says wistfully, touching the weathered wood that crumbles beneath her hand. She rubs the rotted through grains between her fingers and let's it float and drift away. "They have put aside childish things,"

I should have done, she thinks silently to herself. I wouldn't have been caught unawares my life now if I had grown up a long time ago. The corners of her mouth pull down in a small frown.

One of her strands of gold, flashes silver.

"It's….it's incredible" Crane says, voice full of wonder. He sloshes himself to the cave floor and hauls himself up so he can look at it all from a new angle. "These are all yours?"

"Not all," she concedes. "Some of these were Sophie's, that thing there," she points over to what Crane instantly recognizes as a harpooning gun and chills run down his spine.

"That….that thing is very unsuitable for a child's toy," he gulps.

Abbie laughs sadly. " Oh we know. But Sophie's a fighter. She was trained as one, she'll never have need of a weapon like this…..that's what it is, isn't it? the end is very sharp."

"It's meant to kill,"

"What?"

"Whales,"

She stills, thinking of the terrible great beauty of those creatures that sweep the deep. The gaping mouths that pull like a wind and schools offish fleeing away.

They're enormous.

Huge.

Their very existence, an unfathomable wonder, embodied, and yet---she looks on the gun with fresh eyes. The sharp and pointed end, the long arm of it.

This is what man has made, she thinks. This piece of metal, could fell such a creature? Her heart shudders to think it. What else has she scavenged here, her and her peers as young mer, that were weapons for their destruction. What else has man made to murder those who dwell among them, that they played with as toys, oblivious.

"Why would you hunt a whale?" she asks, at a loss. "What has it done to you?"

He flusters. "I, I…. ** _I,_** don't hunt whales, I….I can't even fish! My Uncle tried to teach me but I couldn't see the point in it….."

"You eat them, don't you?"

"Pardon?"

"Fish…..humans eat fish."

"Some do, yes……it has been recommended for some years to be good for our health….."

"And where does the fish, come from?"

"What do you mean Abbie----"

"How do you get it, who brings the fish to you,"

"Fishermen," he replies, feeling uneasy. "They come with their nets, and cast them and……"

It is as her mother said. Lori's story unfurls in her mind. Somehow the horror of sitting idly by while a strange man poached the waters hadn't set in properly then. But now.

"And they still come, don't they, take from us to feed you,"

Crane scrunches his brow. "They do. Not as much as once before. Not…..nearly as….good as a catch as they once did…..I cannot stop an industry, Abbie. It is for many their livelihood. The only way to put food on their tables, roof overhead. Joe's father, my friend form earlier…..even he was a fisherman before he died."

When she looks at him, she sees the discomfort and pain of an inherited guilt settling on his shoulders.

"I am being melancholy, forgive me."

"There is nothing to forgive. You are right to be angry with me, cross with all of us, I never knew your kind existed, but…..humans have made you suffer. They have harmed you, and for that I am sorry."

I am not angry, Crane."

She turns back to him, swimming to the cave floor and leans on it. "I have never thought much of where these things came from, what they were used for….it, opens up a great deal of questions. How your world, meets mine."

Poaching. Blood. Death. Siren song and burning fires.

Abbie looks toward the ship and along the cave floor where more odds and ends are scattered. "Cynthia liked that, tell me that isn't harmful," She gestures to something frilly and pink and Crane laughs lightly.

"No, that, this is only a parasol," he ambles over to pick it up and opens it, twirling it over his shoulder and inspite of her self Abbie cracks a smile. "What does it do?"

"It provides shade from the sun. For proper ladies," he continues to twirl it and make a show of walking on his tip toes and sashaying in a way that sends her into a fit of giggles.

"And this?"

And on they go, she dashes into the depths of the ship or reaches up on the frame and returns to him with objects and he explains what they are used for on land, their purpose, demonstrates them, and the dark mood from earlier is easily forgotten.

"And this?"

"Is there no cease to these wonders?" he chuckles warmly. Abbie shakes her head.

"They stopped collecting but I didn't……I suppose I never out grew it." She leans on his leg, his feet dangle in the water beside her and she marvels at his wiggling toes.

"You know……in it's chaos…..there'sa sort of sadness to here." he trails off thoughtfully. After all, a ship wreck entails there were people on it. People who fought for their lives, and drowned. People who left behind loved ones.

It's a graveyard, that they have made a plaything.

And yet for that, there's something wild and peaceful about it as well. "Yet…..yet there's something else here theres,"

"Hope." Abbie supplies, turning her brown almond eyes up at him. "That where one thing ends another begins. And not everything will only ever be seen one way."

He nods and holds her gaze, reaching tentatively to touch her hair. She watches him steadily as he does so before suddenly heaving herself up and touching her lips to his cheek.

His eyes go round in shock and his mouth hangs open.

She ducks back down into the water, releasing a stream of bubbles that sounds like a panicked shriek.

I can't believe I did that. She thinks. What was I thinking, how could I do that? His beard tickles!

She bobs her head back up to the surface, bashful. "I….apologize….."

He pitches himself into the water beside her and gently reaches to cup her face, stroking thumbs across her cheeks. "It was a bit ofa surprise,I'll admit." his eyes twinkle and shine. "But it was not unwelcome."

The seconds tick by and she stays there, her face in his hands, his hair hangs in his eyes and she sweeps her gaze on his lips and finds herself wondering what they would feel like---you're engaged--she chastises herself.

Finally Crane speaks.

"I don't want to presume, or rush…..whatever this is, but I am open to it, to know more of your world, and you, if you would let me. I am already infinitely grateful that you shared this place with me, I know it must be special to you. So Thank you, for bringing me here."

Leaning in, he presses the softest kiss to her cheek, lingering, her eyes flutter closed at the sensation of so much warmth in one simple gesture and then all at once it's over. As he withdraws their eyes connect.

Light begins to break up the shadows of the water and snaps them both out of their haze.

"Come, I will take you back." but he resists going back under the water holding her hand to his heart instead.

"Tell me I will see you again, please. Anytime of day…..I will make it."

"Tomorrow, the same time, now come on!" she laughs, wrenching him down with her and back they go, kicking and darting back to the shore.

When he staggers to his feet the sun is just hitting the sand and the time is late for them both but he still dawdles to hold her hand and make her promise twice more to meet him again.

"I already agreed! Now let me go! You'll get me in trouble!"

"Alright, alright, thank you again, go safely," he implores.

"You too!"

He bows over her hand, kissing her knuckles. "Until tonight, Abbie,"

She darts away, waving at him before she vanishes. "Until then."


	9. Chapter 9

"Where are you coming from."

Crane jolts as he slips in the back door and collides with his Uncle Henry's storm cloud gaze, flashing behind the morning glare on his spectacles. His mouth is set in a firm frown.

"A walk!" Crane exclaims too eagerly. "The sun was up high and I could hardly sleep last night, so I went out for some air----"

"By the sea?" Henry cuts in, sneering at him.

"The air is, particularly, fresh, by the sea," Crane gulps, trying to edge past before the man grips his wrist, hard.

"You are soaked through," he wrinkles his nose as he takes a deep whiff.

"I fell in."

"That's clumsy, even for you."

"I'd…..I'd better go, Uncle, open the shop for the day….."

"I'm coming with you,"

Crane splutters, "Y-y-y-you haven't set foot in the shop in----"

"I'm not going to the blasted shop, but I am going into town with you today. I have other business. I'm getting on in years, and like it or not, so are you, and someone around here has to care about the legacy of our family name while the other takes morning swims in the sea," he grunts.He casts one more disparaging glance over Crane, mouth turning down in disgust. "Hurry up and get dressed. I haven't got all day."

Ichabod shrugs out of his grasp and goes quickly. The day passes without excitement, and returns to see Abbie again that night, and the night after, and all the ones after that.

* * *

 

"You are going again!" Sophie hisses accusingly, spooking Abbie that evening as she attempts to slip away. Abbie has been making no secret of her anger and irritation with her engagement to Andy, stormy and cold all day, giving herself an easy excuse to retire and expressly demand to be left alone.

Because her parents are doting, loving, and perhaps foolish, they do not crowd Abbie, no matter how much the desire it, they let her turn a cold shoulder and depart from lessons and supper in a huff, telling themselves that Abbie needs only time, she will come around eventually. Soon. So Abbie abuses their caring intention of giving her space, has been, for the past week and a half. Every night, stealing away while the waters grow murk with dark and on the surface are bathed moonlight, she absconds to see him. She goes alone now, telling herself it is best not to get her friends in deeper trouble. The less they know the less they can be accountable for. She does this for their sake, and not because she has chosen the selfish resolve of her heart and to the depths with the consequences.

Yet, she underestimates her friends caring. She lets out a slow breath, turning to see Sophie watching her with narrowed eyes around a corner.

"Sophie are you _spying_ on me?" she whispers incredulously. "Skulking in the reefs and caves?"

"I have been coming to see you and every night have been turned away by your parents----you think nothing of them do you? To deceive them? They turn me away because they feel for you, how distraught you are, with a perfectly, sensible, logical, safe, arrangement, and tell me, ' _Sophie, dear, it's best you come back another nigh_ t,"

Abbie cringes at the way Sophie casts her voice in a tone like the Queens. It makes her shudder with shame. "You're getting very good at that," Abbie shivers. "Have you been practicing?"

"Who knows what I get up to, while you go above courting danger----"

"He is not dangerous!" Abbie retorts fiercely, darting to meet Sophie, face to face, her fins rise defensively and Sophie's gaze ticks over her, taking in the sudden dark pooling in her friends eyes.

"You would take arms against me for him?" Sophie asks cooly.

Abbie swallows and takes a deep breath looking away. "No. No, Sophie……you just don't understand,"

"I understand that you are risking everything and he has nothing to lose. And that doesn't seem fair, Abbie. You are a Princess, a royal, you are destined to be our Queen, and it is unseemly, it is unbecoming, that you would jeopardize all of that, for a passing mortal. He will ruin you, Abbie. Think. Think."

"I'm going to be late."

Sophie watches mournfully as her friend takes off, vanishing into the distance.

* * *

 

Sophie takes a different current than she usually does headed home, arms folded crossly before her she steels herself as she swims into the outskirts. Where the sharks circle and fish with bulbous glowing eyes and long fangs hover in crevices, watching for prey. It's not too late to turn back, she thinks.

"This was a mistake," she whispers to herself, shaking the thoughts from her head, intending to perform an about face when she is confronted with a great shadow. Her breath leaves her. The dark slit eyes. The writhing coils of silver hair. All of that knowledge. All of that prowess and wisdom, discarded. She has lived so long, here, in the wilds, fending for herself since her exile.

"Sophie, _pet_ ," The sea witch coos. "My dear, granddaughter, it's been so long since you've paid a visit."

"I got just got turned around," she explains, trying to find a way to dart around the creature but finding none. When Sophie was a babe she hadn't been so easy to scare. But years in the safe haven of the kingdom makes her shrink away from her ancestor. She who gave her the most uncanny gift for borrowing voices.

"Turned around, way out here," the voice burbles, warm, resonant, mocking. "My darling, my dear darling you take me for a fool,"

Sophie cries out as a tentacle lashes out, twining around her wrist, tugging her close so she can look the sea witch in the eyes.

"Well since you've come all this way, pet. Let us have a visit, hmmm? Follow me," she growls.

Sophie swallows thickly. "Yes, Grandmother Pandora."

* * *

 

"So how are you," she asks, petting an eel that glowers at her side.

Sophie sits opposite, held down by one of Pandora's tentacles. "I am well, grandmother."

"And your husband?" she spits. "Rust?"

" _Ash_ ," Sophie counters weakly.

"Forgive me," Pandora coos, relaxing her grip. "Everyone back home? the King?"

"Well."

"The _Queen_ ,"

Sophie swallows. "Well, grandmother."

Eyes narrowed Pandora purses her lips, trying to read Sophie. "And _the Princess_ ," she hisses, just as another eel glides up beside her. Pandora watches the young mermaid carefully. She was there when Sophie was born. She held her in her arms and had sung her song, before vanishing back into obscurity. Until Sophie was five, the mother would bring her to visit Pandora. She was fond of the little mer, lightening quick, bold, fearless. But eventually the visits dwindled, and she saw considerably less of Sophie. It's been nearly three years. In that time Sophie has become a soldier on reserveand a married woman. Fiercely loyal and serving to the crown. So why has she come to visit her outcast grandmother this evening, when there are whispers on the tide that the Princess is engaged, preparations underway. Surely, Sophie, dutiful courtier, ought to be there.

"Well," Sophie answers, avoiding Pandora's gaze.

"Do not lie to me Sophie,"

Sophie grimaces as the tentacle squeezes, just a tad.

"You can tell _me_ , sweet, after all, we are family." she entreats. "The fact that you are welcome among them and I am not, bares little weight," she continues in a snarl.

Sophie hesitates. They are kin, yes, she is sometimes reminded of similarities she bares in her gifts to Pandora, but she does not forget that the sea witch chose these outlier caves rather than stay among the colony, among their kind. She chose to set herself apart, divorced herself from them in every way she could. If these tentacles that she has spelled herself with is not already evidence of that.

"Answer me Sophie,"

"There is not---"

"There is a reason why you come here after all this time, Sophie." her grip tightens, enough for Sophie to wince and squirm. Pandora's eyes blaze. **_"Don't play stupid,_ ** it doesn't suit you."


End file.
